NEW FROM COLD RUN..

Blood Diamonds?

Child Soldiers?

The memoir and the movie have only scratched the surface. Black Man’s Grave tells what happened to place the boy-turned-soldier in jeopardy and why Sierra Leone’s diamonds acquired their bloody tinge. Meet the greedy politicians who hijacked a fledgling democracy, the rebels who brought them down, and the villagers who struggled to survive the country’s chaotic descent.

Black Man’s Grave, the first book to seriously examine the causes and conduct of Sierra Leone’s horrific decade of civil war, portrays the small, northern village of Fadugu as its way of life collapses. Based on years of correspondence between villagers and the book’s authors, both former Peace Corps volunteers in Fadugu, Black Man’s Grave views the Revolutionary United Front through the eyes of those who bore the brunt of its attacks.

Paperback 5.5" x 8.5", 224 pages;
Includes map and 12 photos; notes, sources, and index. Price: $14.95; Distributed to the trade by AtlasBooks,
1-800-266-5564

The cast includes Sierra Leone’s “big man,” Siaka Stevens; RUF leader Foday Sankoh, whose grandfatherly demeanor belied the viciousness with which he sought to impose his “revolution”; and one who aspired to the big man role, Charles Taylor from next-door Liberia. Taylor’s support for Sierra Leone’s rebel war expanded from initial hostility toward Stevens’s handpicked successor into a commercial venture that supplied arms in exchange for diamonds. In an offshoot of that unsavory trade, links between Sierra Leone’s diamonds and al Qaeda have been traced. The revelations of Black Man’s Grave help us understand the frustrations that simmer throughout much of the third world and threaten a peaceful future for all.

Black Man’s Grave is now available at book stores and Amazon.com

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